Another day where life got in the way of blogging. Hope these interesting articles compensate for the long silence.

What’s she got to complain about?

It’s already old news that Michelle Obama — Princeton and Harvard grad, highly paid (but still useless) lawyer; and jet-setting President’s wife — thinks herself very poorly used by the American system. To hear her tell it, she’s been chewed up and then spit out on a filthy sidewalk, where crude, rude, KKK-type white people have ground her remnants into the dust. I just have a few links about this and a comment.

Wolf Howling also alludes to an important, and extremely sad, point: Ms. Obama may be lying about her facts, but she’s not lying about her emotions. This Ivy League-educated, spoiled, pampered, private-jetted darling genuinely feels as if she is a victim. It turns out that the only thing worse than having to listen to Michelle Obama is actually to be Michelle Obama and to live within that unhappy, resentful, beleaguered brain.

Sadly, most series on the air and in development are unsubtle messages formulated by postmodern Holly wood writers, producers and executives. This is no longer mere propaganda, but a clarion call for a new national morality. It is a world where women do not need husbands to raise children, as in Playing House, where the most anticipated marriage on TV is between two men, as in Modern Family and where the ties that hold a family together are murder, rape and plunder, as in Vikings. The protagonists of The Americans, a Cold War drama, are a ruthless but attractive Soviet couple working as spies against America. In the hit Netflix series House of Cards, a Washington D.C. power couple, played to silkily sinister perfection by Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright, lie, cheat and murder their way into the White House. Blessedly, these repugnant American Borgias have chosen not to have children. But the show’s writers would have us believe that theirs is a glorious union.

In the new Hollywood lexicon, the family is a unit held together not by traditional family values, but by gangster ethics.

Global warming is real — provided you ignore all the facts proving that it isn’t

The global warmists are getting increasingly shrill in their insistence that the earth is on the verge of boiling us all to death, and that anyone who denies it is a flat-earther who, in a just world, would be burned at the stake for heresy (if only burning at the stake didn’t increase the atmosphere’s already deadly carbon load). Being ignorant, these hysterics do not understand that, historically, global warming has always been a blessing for mankind, increasing available water and crops, and allowing people to focus on cultural advancement. Global warming would be a good thing.

Of course, there is no global warming. More likely, there is going to be global cooling, thanks to a very quiet sun — and global cooling has always meant famine. We in America might be able to weather a famine (especially if we can agree that humans matter more than Delta Smelt), but more fragile economies are going to be in desperate trouble.

Another piece of old news is Mark Halperin’s embarrassingly racist questions as he tried to prove to Hispanics that Ted Cruz is really a coconut — brown on the outside, but totally white-racist-male-chauvinist-pig on the inside. However, even if it is old news, if you haven’t read Fausta’s response to Halperin’s nonsense, you’ve missed something fine.

Halperin, faced with attacks from the Left and the Right, did an “I’m sorry you’re offended” apology. And Cruz, cleverly avoiding his reputation for snarkiness, responded with an extremely gracious “you have nothing to apologize for.”

The First Amendment’s death continues apace

Victor Davis Hanson keeps getting better — which is impressive when one considers how good he was to begin with. The whole time I was reading his article about the Left’s steady deconstruction and destruction of the First Amendment, my head kept bobbing up and down, like one of those nodding dog toys you used to see in the windows of cars. If you read it, you’ll nod too:

Apparently there is no longer a First Amendment as our Founders wrote it, but instead something like an Orwellian Amendment 1.5, which reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press — except if someone finds some speech hurtful, controversial, or not helpful.”

Cowardice abounds. When artists and writers mock Mormonism in a Broadway play like the Book of Mormon or use urine or excrement to deface Christian symbols, no Christian gang seeks to curb such distasteful expression — much less to kill anyone. Every religion but Islam knows that its iconography is fair game for caricature in the United States; none sanctions assassins. Jihadists seek to make this asymmetry quite clear to Western societies and thereby provide deterrence that gives Islam special exemption from Western satire and criticism in a way not accorded to other religions. And they are enabled by Westerners who prefer tranquility to freedom of expression.

When will Kirsten Powers realize she’s a conservative?

For many years, as I slowly realized that I was no longer aligned with Democrats, I still thought of myself as a Democrat, albeit a smarter, more informed one. It took a while for me to figure out that my values were completely inconsistent with today’s Democrat party and that, rather than honoring myself by remaining a Democrat, I was demeaning myself.

The root of nearly every free-speech infringement on campuses across the country is that someone—almost always a liberal—has been offended or has sniffed out a potential offense in the making. Then, the silencing campaign begins. The offender must be punished, not just for justice’s sake, but also to send the message to anyone else on campus that should he or she stray off the leftist script, they too might find themselves investigated, harassed, ostracized, or even expelled. If the illiberal left can preemptively silence opposing speakers or opposing groups— such as getting a speech or event canceled, or denying campus recognition for a group—even better.

Self-identified “moderate” Muslims sound surprisingly extreme

I was talking with a friend today about American blacks and the way they resolutely refuse to involve themselves in their own salvation, preferring to blame white people and then to look to the majority-white government system for succor. Every time I spoke broadly about “blacks,” my friend reminded me that the majority of American blacks are just like me: hard-working, honest, and decent. It’s only the noisy ones who are engaged in black-on-black killings, drug use, single motherhood, and rioting.

My friend, as usual, is correct. Thinking through my rhetorical laziness, I realized that the reason I keep lumping all blacks together, as if the disgraceful minority represents the completely ordinary and respectable majority, is because whenever the minority acts up, the majority, instead of castigating those self-destructive behaviors, supports the behaviors, joining in the constantly repeated chorus of “It’s not our fault; it’s whitey’s fault; now give us money.”

My friend then reminded me that speaking up isn’t that easy. Blacks who step off that plantation are subject to vicious racist attacks that would do the KKK proud — except that these attacks come from Democrats. (Oh, wait! The KKK was also Democrat, wasn’t it? It seems as if the Democrats, no matter where they stand politically vis a vis blacks, always keep a closet full of disgraceful racist taunts at the ready.) As a closet conservative in my community, I know precisely how difficult it is to stand against your community, especially when you’re raising children.

This is all by way of introduction to the concept of “moderate” Muslims. Those who speak out sound remarkably like the fanatics. And those who don’t speak out . . . well, it’s difficult to know whether they agree with the fanatics and so-called moderates, or if they’re simply scared to death. After all, an ISIS sword is even more devastating than a Democrat’s racial slurs.

Our profoundly weak economy

Progressives I know insist that the American economy is in great shape and invariably point to the stock market as proof. They seem incapable of understanding that years of low interest rates, steady money printing, and quasi-fascist crony capitalism have disconnected the stock market from the economy. The stock market no longer proves anything at all, except that those who know how to operate the political system can still get rich.

Given how weak our economy is, and how dangerous the money policies are that drive the illusion of prosperity, it’s small wonder that a well-known economist says that the next recession — and there will be a next one — will be devastating.

Barronelle Stutzman, the gal whom Washington State has been intent upon destroying because she refused to provide flowers for a gay wedding, got a chance to have her say in the Washington Post. You know how you can tell that she’s a Christian? It’s not just that she makes a compelling case explaining how she can be friends with gays while still standing behind her freedoms of speech, religion, and association when it comes to being forced to provide her artistic services for a ceremony that runs counter to her mainstream faith.

No, the real reason you can tell that Stutzman is a true Christian is that, when she speaks of the man who turned her over to the Nazi branch of the Washington State political correctness police, she still calls him her “friend.” Stutzman either has her tongue firmly in cheek, or she is a woman who takes seriously the Christian notion of turning that same cheek.

Anyway, please read Stutzman’s article. The conclusion sums up what every American should understand about freedom:

In Washington, Rob and Curt have the right to get a marriage license. But that doesn’t mean that the state should be able to force people in the creative professions like myself to create expression celebrating the ceremonies. We all have different viewpoints about how to live our lives. One thing I’ve loved about our country is that we protect the freedom of artistic expression and the right to disagree over these kinds of issues without one side being threatened by the government over it.

But whatever the state says and however they want to try to punish me, they can’t change my faith. What happens in my business or my life is in God’s hands. Having a clear conscience means much more to me than any amount of money or my business. Rob and Curt have their beliefs about marriage and aren’t being stopped by the state from living them out. I only ask for the same freedom.

Yet another Prager University video that should be watched by every American. I’ve been saying this forever, but what do I — a white middle-class, middle-aged woman — know? I wanted to stand up and cheer after watching Chloe Valdary have her say:

Last year I had virtually no work; this year, if the pace keeps up, I’ll be working almost full time. Frankly, I preferred no work.

Fortunately — and the lawyers amongst you will appreciate this — I’m getting access to Westlaw again, and won’t be trapped in Lexis hell. When it comes to Westlaw, it’s a brilliant interface and I feel like a brilliant practitioner when I use it.

I’m not going to stop blogging, though, just because of a little legal work. I’ve been collecting interesting information, and now I get to share it with you:

I’ve been trying to have a more optimistic view of things in my life lately, along the lines of “when life hands you lemons, make lemonade.” Traffic tickets are an opportunity to be a better driver. Joint problems are a reminder to repair my body before old-age makes doing so impossible. Things like that — seeing problems as opportunities for improvement.

The first cartoon in this line-up really resonated with me. I was talking to someone the other day — a Progressive — who was complaining about her disastrous secretary, who is completely disorganized.

I asked the obvious question. “Why don’t you fire her?”

“Weeelllll,” she hedged, “that’s not really possible.”

A little more tooth-pulling, and I got the answer: “My secretary’s black and female. My company mostly can’t fire her.”

Let me just say that I consider it profoundly demeaning, and therefore racist, to hold blacks and women, and especially black women, to a lower standard than one would hold other employees. I happen to think that blacks, women, and black women are as capable of being capable as anyone else and that it’s an insult to imply or act otherwise.

Derryck Green, of Project 21, makes a point that all of us here already know, which is that conservatives treat members of other races like human beings, while Leftists (no matter whether they call themselves liberals or Democrats or Progressives) treat them like slightly stupid children who can be bribed in exchange for votes. What makes this video worth watching, considering that we already agree with the ultimate point, is the clarity with which Green makes his argument:

Despite my rather chronic worries about the state of our nation and the state of our world, I seldom have nightmares. Last night, though, I had a doozy. It was short, vivid, and had me waking dripping with sweat. I dreamed that my son and I got off a bus in San Francisco only to find ourselves surrounded by Muslim teenagers who proceeded to beat my son to death.

When I awoke, I calmed myself by looking around my peaceful home and said out loud, “That can’t happen here.” But of course it can happen here. It can happen anywhere that radical Islamists — who are incredibly proud of their slaughters — get their tentacles.

It shouldn’t happen here, in the country we once thought of as the “land of the free and the home of the brave” but not only are we rather quickly ceding our freedom to the federal government, a nation that’s terrified of letting children play in parks or of candy in schools really can’t be considered very brave any more.

In this, the beginning of the 21st century, it’s even more likely to happen here because we have an administration head by a man who manifestly feels an affinity for Islam, and encourages his government to do the same.

And now for your regularly scheduled round-up:

The moral inversion of Israel hatred

Six million Jews died at Nazi hands. Those European Jews who survived suffered horribly: exile, torture, imprisonment, slave labor, etc. Because the oldest hatred never dies, the anti-Semites of the world have found a new use for this apocalyptic tragedy. After decades of denying the Holocaust, they’re now kind of acknowledging that it happened, solely so that they can liken Jews to Nazis.

Martin Kramer explains the phenomenon of “Holocaust Inversion,” which is making its way to an over-priced, over-subsidized college campus near you. I’ll share with you his conclusion in case you don’t have time to read the whole thing:

There is such a thing as legitimate criticism of Israel, and there is such a thing as crossing the line into demonization and, to put it plainly, Jew-baiting. The analogies spewed by Columbia’s tenured professors are of the latter kind, and are obscene. Jew-baiting covers a wider range than anti-Semitism, and Holocaust inversion is its favorite technique. Jew-baiting is the demand that Israel and its supporters explain why Gaza isn’t like a Nazi extermination camp or a starved ghetto for the doomed, or why a targeted air campaign isn’t just like the incineration of Dresden. That it should be practiced so openly by tenured professors at New York’s Ivy League home is a scandal, and a warning.

The IDF’s comprehensive site with information about Operation Protective Edge

In this, the first war that has seen the IDF circumvent hostile reporters and communicate directly with the public through the web and social media, the IDF has done a consistently excellent job using the these new media. A good example is its comprehensive Operation Protective Edge information site.

And yes, Obama hates Israel

Peter Wehner tries desperately hard to be a temperate, rational voice over at Commentary. Not for him reflexive Obama criticisms.

Wehner’s growing problem, though, is that Obama deserves a lot of those criticisms. Thankfully, Wehner is honest enough to recognize when criticism is due, and man enough to make it. Recently, he’s started acknowledging that Obama’s conduct towards Israel is not just part of some overarching Progressive game plan but, in fact, rests on a solid bed of real dislike for that tiny, beleaguered nation:

In a neighborhood featuring Hamas, ISIS, Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran, just to name a few of the actors, President Obama was “enraged” at … Israel. That’s right, Israel–our stalwart ally, a lighthouse of liberty, lawfulness, and human rights in a region characterized by despotism, and a nation filled with people who long for peace and have done so much for so long to sacrifice for it (including repeatedly returning and offering to return its land in exchange for peace).

Yet Mr. Obama–a man renowned for his lack of strong feelings, his emotional equanimity, his disengagement and distance from events, who New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd refers to as “Spock” for his Vulcan-like detachment–is not just upset but “enraged” at Israel.

Maybe Obama would like Israel more if he understood history better

Today, I have a twofer on Obama’s ignorance about all things historical. Both posts allude not just to Obama’s ignorance, but to his complacent belief that, if you just sit back and do nothing, the mere fact that we’re living in the 21st century means that good will inevitably triumph, without any requirement for action from the world’s good people.

Obama often parrots Martin Luther King Jr.’s phrase about the arc of the moral universe bending toward justice. But King used that metaphor as an incentive to act, not as reassurance that matters will follow an inevitably positive course.

Another of Obama’s historical refrains is his frequent sermon about behavior that doesn’t belong in the 21st century. At various times he has lectured that the barbarous aggression of Vladimir Putin or the Islamic State has no place in our century and will “ultimately fail” — as if we are all now sophisticates of an age that has at last transcended retrograde brutality and savagery.

In Obama’s hazy sense of the end of history, things always must get better in the manner that updated models of iPhones and iPads are glitzier than the last.

The Streetwise Professor, meanwhile, says that Obama’s speech after James Foley’s death reveals the “progressive dialectic” that props up Obama’s belief system:

Obama’s progressivism, in many senses of the word, shines through here. According to Obama, ISIS is an atavism that is destined for extinction, because it does not fit into the 21st century. Through some sort of (unstated) dialectical process, such people “ultimately fail.” Humanitarians prevail, as the world progresses to higher and higher states of development and consciousness. This is profoundly ahistorical. Atavistic forces have repeatedly toppled far superior civilizations.

What Obama’s vacations really mean

Conservatives have harped for years about Obama’s vacations — their scope, frequency, frivolity, and expense. Periodically, Leftists will announce that Bush and Reagan vacationed more frequently and at greater expense. I don’t know if these claims are true and neither do I care. Instead, my visceral feelings about Obama’s vacations is that they are too showy, frequent, and costly for a nation in a recession and a nation at war. There was and is something indecent about them. Matthew Continetti feels the same way and has written a really marvelous article expanded on that feeling.

Foley was not the saint he’s painted as being

Nothing, absolutely nothing, excuses ISIS’s heinous execution of James Foley. Still, it’s worth knowing who he was and, I’m sorry to say, he may not have been the saint he’s portrayed as being.

According to Daniel Greenfield, who provides the evidence to back up his charges, Foley was a Leftist activist masquerading as a journalist. His unswerving support for Sunnis against Shias in Syria’s civil war blinded him to the evils of both. Along the way, as his Twitter feed shows, he was hostile to America’s effort to contain Islamic terrorism and cold to the slaughter of Christians:

Foley came to Syria to support the Sunni Islamist rebels against the Syrian government. He was a vehement advocate and while he didn’t necessarily side with any single group, he echoed the one sided narrative rather than telling the truth about the Islamists. His Twitter feed was full of urgings to arm the Jihadists.

Meanwhile he sneered at America’s War on Terror.

He cheered on the Sunni Muslim terrorists fighting to ethnically cleanse the Christians of Aleppo. In the conflict between Israel and Hamas, his tweets and retweets were chock full of pro-Sunni Syrian terrorist propaganda.

Given the above, it should come as no surprise that Foley also supported Hamas over Israel.

Haters got to hate

Andrew Klavan is back with a video helping conservatives understand some of the Leftists’ favorite catch-phrases. You’ll enjoy it.

The only problem I have with the video is that Klavan didn’t include the word “hater” in the list. I freely admit to being a “hater.” Indeed, I think more people should be “haters.” It’s not the fact that you hate; it’s those you choose to hate.

I hate ISIS and other radical Islamist groups and their members. I hate pedophiles. I hate finding black widows in my house. I’m a hater, but I’m a smart, focused hater. Where I differ from Democrats is that, within the American political system, I strongly disagree with what they advocate and do but, unlike them, I do not “hate” my political opponent.

Oh, and before I forget, here’s the Klavan video:

And let’s be honest for once about who the real racists too often are

While we’re on the subject of racists, you have to see this video, in which a couple of conservatives turn the table on a Latin American reporter looking for racism.

Also on the subject of hate, you have to see the article about the Democrat newspaper that someone let slip past a photo of Asian Americans with made-up racist names that would have worked perfectly in any Hollywood film or newspaper from the 1870s through the 1930s. I suspect that a crew of juvenile Leftists working at the paper were playing around and, before they could correct their little bit of fun, the issue ran.

The fact is that Democrats hate Asians because Asians put the lie to Leftist myths about white tyranny oppressing non-white peoples. Asians also kill the myth that growing up in the slums means generations in the slums without government help. And of course, they destroy the myth that growing up in a poor neighborhood means you’ll be a psychopathic gang banger. Asians, in turn, respond to this race hatred by worshiping the Democrat Party’s assurance that Asians are victims of white hegemony and must vote for big government to protect themselves. In other words, just like Jews, Asians are the world’s smartest dumb people (or the world’s dumbest smart people?).

Fear of being called racist allows British town to ignore hundreds of pedophile abuse crimes

Back when I lived in England, Yorkshire, unlike large swaths of Southern England, was very, very English. There weren’t even many tourists there.

That’s all changed, of course. Thanks to Labour’s open door policy for the Muslim parts of the former British Empire, Yorkshire has morphed in Little Pakistan. Combine this influx of hard core Muslims with Britain’s politically correct culture and you get a miscarriage of justice on a grand scale: Social workers in the medieval south Yorkshire town of Rotherham closed their eyes to more than 1,000 cases of child sexual abuse because the abusers were Muslims, and the social workers were afraid they’d be labeled as racists if they acted to protect the children.

This evil has been exposed in only one Yorkshire town. You don’t have to be psychic to know that it happened in many others too.

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Europe may simply be damned

In France, 10% or so of the population is Muslim. I assume that 100% of that 10% is part of the 1 in 6 French people who support ISIS. That still leaves 6% of the non-Muslim French population that supports ISIS just because….

I truly think Europe is damned. That is, without even the excuse of themselves being Muslims, significant numbers of Europeans support an ideological/political/military entity that is, as Jonah Goldberg insists we admit, “evil.”

Class warfare rhetoric breeds hatred

I’m not actually sure that class warfare rhetoric had anything to do with the horrible scene described at a WalMart that was accepting Kiwani’s and Salvation Army vouchers for school supplies for poor children. It’s just that I cannot think of any other thing to describe the dishonesty and ingratitude that the Lonely Libertarian witnessed.

The Justice Department may have a problem arguing that Michael Brown was “executed.”

Eric Holder has chosen to fling himself into the Ferguson uproar on the side of Michael Brown, never mind that Holder made this decision immediately, without benefit of any actual facts. As facts are emerging, Holder may regret his hasty decision. Why? Because in a shooting with a bullet-in-corpse pattern remarkably similar to the Michael Brown case, Holder and his team argued vociferously that there was nothing execution-y about even a shot to the top of the head.

When it comes to corporations, I agree with both the Left and the Right

One of the things Leftists like to point out about American corporations when conservatives raise the issue of inordinately high taxes is the fact that corporations get so many taxpayer subsidies. On this one, both the Left and the Right are correct. Subsidies put the government’s heavy, often wrong, thumb on the scale and lead to cronyism and monopolies. And heavy taxes chase away businesses, wealth, and jobs. We should therefore do away with both of them says Stan Collender.

Yeah, the media hates us (Republicans, that is)

There’s a reason Ed Driscoll is one of the premier media analysts in the conservative blogosphere — he’s good at what he does, helped by an incredible knowledge base about the American media.

Today’s evidence of that truth is a flashback to a time when media members were as open in their condescension towards Americans and their disdain for Leftists as they are today, with the difference being that there was no internet to disseminate their attitudes to all Americans.

I’d be surprised if there’s ever a mass shooting at an Argyle, Texas, school.

Pigs fly moment on San Francisco public radio

San Francisco’s public radio and TV channels are notoriously Leftist. I mean, what can you expect when you combine San Francisco and public media? That’s why a conservative woman I know almost crashed her car the other day when she tuned into Michael Krasny’s notoriously Left-leaning forum, and heard a spirited discussion in which host and panel took turns excoriating Obama’s conduct regarding ISIS.

Just to confirm that the show really was hostile to Obama, just peruse the comments from an audience accustomed to tuning into the KQED radio and hearing the usual Progressive mix of Obama and Muslim worship, along with Republican and Israel hatred:

Forget the ice bucket challenge. I have the Michael KRASNY Challenge: Invite the eminent foreign policy analyst John Mearsheimer on to your program!! If it is a foreign policy issue, he can speak to it in depth, in plain yet scholarly language, and it is a view you are apparently never exposed to. Try it some day Michael!! Please?

IMO we in the US shouldn’t be supporting any regime or movement that doesn’t first endorse and implement gay marriage.

(That last was my personal favorite, because it shows someone figuring out that Islamists and their countries are not user-friendly. I may not support gay marriage — preferring that states do civil unions only, leaving marriage to religion — but I do not support regimes that routinely marginalize, torture and execute gays either — and that would be all sharia regimes.)

A new challenge, even better than the ALS one (and one that wastes less water and harms no one):

(I was not surprised to learn that the man issuing the challenge is a Marine.)

Shop for the stuff you need and help the NRA at the same time

I ought to be telling you to shop at Amazon using a Bookworm Room link, but I recognize that doing so is convenient and, honestly, it doesn’t bring me a lot of money. Here’s a better thing to do if you’re an Amazon shopper: Shop through a portal set up so that, that every time you make a purchase, Amazon donates a portion of that purchase to the NRA. Yes, you heard that right. I honestly don’t know how it managed to do so, but the NRA is enrolled in the Amazon Smile program. Under that program, shoppers can set up their account so a fraction of every purchase is given to their designated Amazon Smile charity.

(Not to detract from the NRA, but using that same “Amazon Smile” portal, you can also give other America friendly charities such as Wounded Warrior.)

I get the free speech aspect; I just don’t get what the joke was

The University of Oregon charged a student with all sorts of speech crimes after she spotted a couple walking past her window on a summer’s day and yelled “I hit it first.” The gal claimed it was a joke, but the couple (or some bystanders) took offense. After a blast of publicity, UO backed down, which is a good thing.

I fully understand the basic facts, but there are two things I don’t get. How is yelling out “I hit it first” a joke? And why would anyone find that joke or phrase offensive? Please explain.

Years ago, during the Bush administration, James Taranto read a despairing AP article in which the Progressive author opined that “everything is seemingly spinning out of control.” Taranto loved that phrase and used it to preface any link to crazy things, or things that made Progressive’s crazy.

That phrase keeps wandering into my mind in this, the sixth year of the reign of the Emperor Obama. With our border having as many holes as a fish net, Obama threatening to grant amnesty to five or six million illegal immigrants, the artificially inflated stock market soaring (thank you QE2) as ordinary Americans face increasing financial hardships, race relations set back to the late 1950s and early 1960s, virulent anti-Semitism on the rise around the world, barbaric Islamism also on the rise around the world, Israel besieged, Egypt slowly running out of food (and won’t the world get really interesting when that happens?), and Russia poised on Ukraine’s border — well, I really do feel as if everything is indeed seemingly spinning out of control. I guess the silver lining is that there’s lots to blog about, so blog I will.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend

Patting myself on the back here, I’ve long predicted that Sunni Saudi Arabia, afraid of Shia Iran, would make common cause with Israel. That’s finally happening, as the most radical Islamists — both Sunni and Shia — pick up steam everywhere in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia may have funded radicalism, but it did so primarily to keep that radicalism outside of its own borders. Now, it sees little Jewish Israel as the only bulwark against a radical takeover within those borders.

Hamas Rules of War: Use Civilians

Hamas supporters are claiming it’s a fraud, but to the extent that the IDF claims to have found a handbook in Gaza telling Hamas fighters to hide explosives in civilian houses, advice that jives perfectly with what Hamas actually did, I’m inclined to believe the handbook is real. Also, while there’s plenty of evidence that Hamas uses disinformation (often carried out with threats) to advance its cause, I don’t know of any credible charges that Israel or the IDF routinely lie.

You can tell a lot about an administration by its funeral attendance

I often tell my children that you’re known by the friends you keep. When it comes to presidential administrations, you’re also known by the funerals and memorials you attend. Ben Shapiro has therefore performed a useful function. After reading reports about the three White House representatives at Michael Brown’s funeral, he decided to take a look back at the funerals the White House didn’t think were worth its time. It’s illuminating reading.

A beleaguered Israel offers a useful comparison in presidential styles

This summer’s war is not, of course, the first time Israel’s been under attack. For example, she was attacked in 1947, right after the UN voted her into existence. In 1967, on the eve of what would have been a devastating attack by the militaries of surrounding Arab nations, Israel preemptively struck those militaries to protect her own civilians.

And then there was 1973 — the Yom Kippur War. Israel was on the receiving end of a surprise attack and, horrifyingly, lacked the military equipment to counter it in a long war. Scarily, in the American White House was a Republican president who hated Jews. That Jew-hating Republican president saved Israel.

At To Put It Bluntly, you will find an excellent analysis of the way in which Nixon and Obama have approached surprise attacks on Israel. One president showed leadership, the other wishy-washy follow-ship. The contrast is striking.

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VDH looks at the perfect political storm, not to mention the unending series of lies, that got Obama into the White House in 2008

Yet another sterling VDH article, this one analysis the culmination of eight years of Bush hatred, war fatigue, lies and obfuscation, hysteria, and the delusions of crowds, all of which led to an Obama presidency.

As part of this analysis, Hanson points out that the truth about Obama was readily available, but the drive-by media deliberately ignored it, and too many Americans refused to look for it. You didn’t have to look far to find the truth, though, as is revealed in this Spring 2008 post of mine, in which I linked to a variety of articles detailing problems with candidate Obama. It was all there for everyone to see, but the three monkeys were the order of the day:

Obama’s lying administration

One of the themes I’ve pounded since Obama first appeared on the political scene is that he’s a liar. (Examples of that are here, here, and here.) Since we all know that corporate culture flows down from the top, is it any surprise to find that everyone in his administration is equally infected with dishonesty?

Peter Wehner offers only the latest example of the administration’s provable dishonesty. The subject this time is the administration’s ridiculous contortions as it tries to “prove” that Obama never said that ISIS was a “JV squad.” (The link may be behind a pay wall, but a Commentary online subscription is one of the best bargains around.) The administration is so used to a media both credulous and complicit accepting all of its lies at face that it cannot seem to accept that lies are a bad idea when hard facts exist countering those lies.

The lies America tells blacks

A couple of days ago, I published a long, convoluted post explaining how dreadfully the American Left (with the rest of America tagging along behind) has lied to American blacks, convincing them that they are hapless, hopeless, and helpless victims of a white discrimination so broadly and deeply entrenched that it cannot be overcome.

Today, Andrew Klavan published a short, powerful piece making exactly the same point. His writing is so much better than mine that, if you haven’t yet read my post, ignore it and just head straight for Klavan’s.

Watcher’s Council forum predicting the future in Ferguson

Over at the Watcher’s Council, in this week’s forum council members and honored guests offered their best guesses about whether the grand jury will indict the officer accused of shooting Michael Brown. As always, it’s great reading, offering a variety of viewpoints.

Part of the South’s abandonment of the Democrat Party included its abandonment of racism

If I had to nominate a “must-read” article for today, it would be Mona Charen’s column refuting Charlie Rangel’s libelous claim that, when the South turned Republican, it took its racism along with it, an exodus that disinfected the Democrat party of any residual racism, while infecting the Republican party with America’s original sin (never mind that the Republican party, from its inception before the Civil War, opposed institutional racism). Here are just a few snippets to whet your appetite for this must-read analysis:

It’s true that a Democratic president, Lyndon Johnson, shepherded the 1964 Civil Rights Act to passage. But who voted for it? Eighty percent of Republicans in the House voted aye, as against 61 percent of Democrats. In the Senate, 82 percent of Republicans favored the law, but only 69 percent of Democrats. Among the Democrats voting nay were Albert Gore Sr., Robert Byrd, and J. William Fulbright.

[snip]

Okay, but didn’t all the old segregationist senators leave the Democratic party and become Republicans after 1964? No, just one did: Strom Thurmond. The rest remained in the Democratic party — including former Klansman Robert Byrd, who became president pro tempore of the Senate.

[snip]

The “solid south” Democratic voting pattern began to break down not in the 1960s in response to civil rights but in the 1950s in response to economic development and the Cold War. (Black voters in the north, who had been reliable Republicans, began to abandon the GOP in response to the New Deal, encouraged by activists like Robert Vann to “turn Lincoln’s picture to the wall. That debt has been paid in full.”)

[snip]

These Republican gains came not from the most rural and “deep south” regions, but rather from the newer cities and suburbs. [snip] It was disproportionately suburban, middle-class, educated, young, non-native southern, and concentrated in the growth points that were the least ‘Southern’ parts of the south.”

Back in June, I offered a short commentary about spoliation (i.e., destroying relevant evidence after a lawsuit has been filed), which is a serious no-no in court: “Spoliation is a species of fraud that’s especially disfavored because its purpose is to destroy the integrity of a judicial or investigative process.” If you’re paying any attention to the IRS scandal, which saw a politicized IRS deliberately use its extraordinary powers to stifle pro-conservative and pro-Israel political speech, you’re going to be hearing the word “spoliation” a lot:

The IRS filing in federal Judge Emmet Sullivan’s court reveals shocking new information. The IRS destroyed Lerner’s Blackberry AFTER it knew her computer had crashed and after a Congressional inquiry was well underway. As an IRS official declared under the penalty of perjury, the destroyed Blackberry would have contained the same emails (both sent and received) as Lois Lerner’s hard drive.

This most recent revelation follows closely on the heels of the IRS’s admission that all those lost IRS emails from Lois Lerner and six IRS cohorts weren’t actually lost at all, they were just hard to find. Keep in mind that this admission comes after the IRS, including its director, swore (literally swore, under oath), that the emails were irretrievably gone, since the hard drives had first spontaneously crashed and then, contrary to federal law, been destroyed.

The rule in litigation is that, if you possess documents responsive to a request but they are hard to locate, you have to explain that fact to the court. Moreover, you can also explain why they’re not worth the effort of recovering. What you can’t do is lie, and then lie some more.

I’ve worked in litigation for more than 25 years, and I’ve seen some pretty hard-fought and even dirty lawsuits, but I have never seen this level of dishonesty. Never.

What you also won’t see, ever, is mainstream media coverage about the IRS’s behavior before the lawsuit, when it used its vast, almost untouchable power to silence the administration’s political opponents, or during the lawsuit, when it committed truly heinous frauds against the court.

Time Magazines goes full “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”

My parents, as part of their commitment to being good, informed Americans, subscribed to Time Magazine throughout my childhood (so we’re talking at least the mid-1960s here). I know now that, even back then, Time was beginning to show the Leftist bias that today permeates almost all of the American media. Still, back in the day, Time was a dignified publication. It may have been “news for the masses,” but it was still news, with actual facts, although these facts were certainly spun in a specific political direction.

Time Magazine in its modern incarnation, however, is worse than garbage. Garbage can still be honest, although the topics are trashy. National Enquirer tells the truth, although there’s nothing particularly elevating about knowing the identity of Hollywood’s fattest stars, who’s having a secret affair on the side, or what crazy demands a given celebrity makes before checking into a hotel.

What’s worse than garbage is repeating as true utterly scurrilous blood libels against Jews. Yet that’s precisely what Time Magazine, a once reputable media outlet, did. It published as true the ancient blood libel that Israel was harvesting organs from Palestinians, a claim so false that even its original maker, a Swedish “news” outlet, admitted that it had no proof and, moreover, couldn’t care less that the accusation was a lie.

Even worse, Time backtracked on this libel, not because it realized that some low-level staffer had done something egregiously wrong, which would have required a full retraction and apology, but, instead, only when people started criticizing the libel. Seth Mandel explains just how disgraceful Times‘ conduct was:

Here’s the lede: “Time Magazine retracted a report on Sunday which claimed the Israeli army harvested dead Palestinians’ internal organs after a watchdog group accused the publication of propagating a ‘blood libel.’”

That’s putting it kindly. The watchdog group–HonestReporting–did not so much “accuse” Time of propagating a blood libel as point out that Time was obviously propagating a blood libel. Is there another term for Time’s medieval delusions?

[snip]

There isn’t nearly enough thoughtful analysis in the media or reporters willing to examine and question the assumptions and propaganda they’re fed by Hamas and its NGO allies, instead using reporters on the ground who worship Yasser Arafat. This is often the case when Israel is at war; in 2006, the Reuters practice of using photoshoppers masquerading as photographers led to the application of the term “fauxtography” to Reuters’ work in the Middle East.

But this lack of reporting appears to have spread to Time, and in a particularly offensive way. As hard as it is to believe, media coverage of Israel is actually deteriorating. The race to the bottom hasn’t stopped; it’s just gotten more crowded.

HuffPo takes the lead in the “humor” category of the media’s race to the bottom

Time is racing to the bottom in a disgusting fashion. Other outlets are doing so in more humorous fashion, even if that humor is unwitting. Take HuffPo, for example, which has published a series of photographs showing scientists suffering the anguish of knowing that only 97% of their colleagues are willing to support predictions about climate change that have consistently, and without exception, been proven false once they played out in real-time.

Each of the scientists is shown trying to look sad, although some just look peculiarly constipated, with a few being reduced to squinching their faces into blank idiocy. The humor behind these efforts at existential anguish is exquisite.

Even funnier is HuffPo‘s hysterical, apocalyptic language which, when combined with the usual pedantic assurances that, if we just follow the “science,” all will be well, creates a delicious mix that has all the artistic weight of a poem by William McGonagall. McGonagall, as you may already know, is widely acknowledged to be the worst poet in the English language, in no small part because he combined awful prose with a penchant for tragedy and pedantry. I’ll share with you, first, a bit of HuffPo free verse, followed by a little McGonagall for comparison.

“The photos are minimalist but intense, each wrinkle and crease pointing to a human unease we can all connect with.”

“Although their powerful words provide an interesting context for their expressions, we think the faces alone say more than enough.”

And then there’s McGonagall’s famous work about the Tay Bridge disaster, with this masterful closing stanza:

It must have been an awful sight,
To witness in the dusky moonlight,
While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray,
Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
Oh! ill-fated Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.

Really, other than McGonagall’s more antiquated syntax, it’s hard to tell the two apart.

Scratch a Progressive; find a fascist

With David Gregory out at Meet the Press and Chuck Todd in, Democrat/Progressive strategist and (ahem) thinker Ed Kilgore has some practical advice for the best way in which to make the show edgier and more interesting. The following gem come in response to the plan by Deborah Turness, NBC’s president, to have a panel of journalists conversing, instead of a one-on-one format, in order to make the show edgy and more interesting:

If Turness is serious about this, we need to organize a grassroots campaign to ask that certain journalists be permanently banned from the panel of Meet the Press, or we’ll boycott the damn thing ab initio. I’d start with Peggy Noonan, Bill Kristol, David Gergen, David Brooks and George Will. Even at their best, they’ve all gotten more airtime than their shaky talents merit. But I’m sure you have dozens more who deserve the Meet Ban. Fire away in the comment thread.

Yes, because nothing says hip, edgy, and open-minded like excluding all opposing views and, instead, having party drones agree with each other. Using this rubric, Pravda was also hip, edgy, and open-minded.

Members of the conservative media are also more generous with presenting the underlying source material on which they rely or with which they disagree, something that is especially apparent on the radio. For example, on NPR, Robert Siegel will do an eight minute report that begins with his opining magisterially on a subject, and then continues with his editing in carefully selected snippets of interviews with witnesses, actors and experts. Given the limited time format, it’s inevitable of course that the greater part of any given interview is left on the cutting room floor, with Siegel and his staff picking whatever money lines suit the story they wish to present.

On conservative talk radio, however, the hosts will frequently play half hour long clips, not just of people they support, but of people with whose opinion they differ. Likewise, when these hosts have guests on, the guests are not only people with whom the hosts agree, but people with whom they disagree. And in the latter case, you can comfortably settle in and listen to a free-wheeling, although never mean-spirited, discussion with both host and guest called upon to defend their positions vigorously.

A sad end to a sad story

In 2012, the drive-by media was incredibly excited when a video emerged showing Marines urinating on dead Taliban corpses. This proved — proved!! — that Americans were every bit as bad as the Islamists. After all, urinating on a dead body (which is a crude, demeaning act that I don’t support) is exactly the same as torturing and beheading people; cutting off the genitals of ones enemy, whether he’s dead or alive; or dragging bodies through the streets before cheering crowds. (It’s clear, I hope, that I’m being sarcastic.) At the center of this media storm was Cpl. Robert Richards, a highly respected Marine:

Richards was a scout sniper with multiple deployments to Afghanistan, including one in 2010 during which he sustained severe injuries. Peers and superiors alike praised him for his combat prowess and leadership skills, evidenced by his being hand-selected to serve as the scout sniper platoon team leader for 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines, during its 2011 tour.

Although only 28, Richards is dead. The coroner has not announced the cause of death, but Guy Womack, Richards’ attorney and friend, told reporters that the coroner would be examining the medicines Richards was taking, something that hints at an overdose, accidental or intentional.

To the extent Richards did something unworthy of an American fighter, it was nevertheless something that should have been taken care of within the context of the Marines, rather than something that saw him tried and convicted by the American media. Richards didn’t deserve such a pathetic ending to his career. May be rest in peace now.

American universities harm Leftist students too

A Prager University video makes the compelling argument that, insofar as American universities have overwhelmingly Leftist faculties, students who hew Left (or don’t hew in any direction at all) suffer more than conservative students do:

Pictures

I think henceforth I’ll call this “The Caped Crusader Picture Gallery,” because the Caped Crusader has done it again, providing me with powerful and often funny images:

Caped Crusader sent me a video that simultaneously made me want to laugh and to cry. Of course, it’s funny that the guys being questioned by the camera man cannot come up with the answer when the answer is embedded in in the question. It elicits the same slightly smug laughter that I always felt watching Jay Leno’s “Jaywalking.” “Boy, those yokels sure are dumb! Ha! Ha! Ha!”

Watching these guys, though, with the backdrop of Ferguson in my mind quickly killed my laughter, though, and simply depressed me. I got even more depressed when Tom Elia emailed this little tidbit: Ferguson, Missouri, which in 25 years has shifted from being a slightly white minority enclave of St. Louis to a primarily black majority community has as its second biggest revenue source the fines and penalties paid into its municipal court:

A report issued just last week by the nonprofit lawyer’s group ArchCity Defenders notes that in the court’s 36 three-hour sessions in 2013, it handled 12,108 cases and 24,532 warrants. That is an average of 1.5 cases and three warrants per Ferguson household. Fines and court fees for the year in this city of just 21,000 people totaled $2,635,400.

The Daily Beast cites the above data to show that it’s in the police’s best interests to have an adversarial relationship with residents in Ferguson, and that’s true. But it’s also a reminder that, since the Civil Rights movement effectively came to an end in 1964 when the Civil Rights Act federalized the movement, it’s become big business to keep blacks institutionally victimized. Worse, it’s a business in which blacks are complicit.

Let me say here and now that there is absolutely nothing genetically inherent in blacks that leads them to their disproportionate representation amongst the ranks of the violent, the uneducated, and the fatherless. These are cultural traits, not hereditary ones. Moreover, contrary to multicultural mythology, cultural is not fixed. It can change.

The problem we face now is that, since the 1960s “Great Society,” the political and social culture in America, all of which hew Left, have consistently told blacks, “You don’t need to change. You’re perfect as you are. It’s we, the whites, who need to change.” In other words, blacks are the ultimate fulfillment of the self-esteem movement that started in California and picked up steam to infect the United States.

The self-esteem movement tells children that, no matter what, they’re wonderful. It sets no goals, offers no examples, makes no demands. It just says, “You’re wonderful.”

What sounds wonderful in theory proves to be disastrous in fact. Rather than creating a “wonderful” generation of self-confident, moral, self-disciplined, ambitious, strong young people, we’ve created a generation of self-satisfied yet insecure, morally weak, undisciplined parasites. Not all of them, of course, with those saved from the movement having either been home schooled or raised within a home environment that hewed to more traditional values.

Telling many of the latter type of homes are filled with people who, in Charles Murray’s words, don’t preach what they practice. Within their homes, they drive their children to succeed; in the public forum, though, they dare not tell anyone, especially minorities, that the secret to success in America is to work hard at school, to work hard at work, and to stay on the right side of the law.

American blacks are the ne plus ultra of the self-esteem movement. All criticism of them is banned, including self-criticism. They cannot reform their self-destructive behaviors, because they have been programmed to be narcissistic: they are completely armored against their sins, so armored that they cannot even modify their behavior to blunt what they see as the consequences of inimical behavior from their “enemy” — with the enemy being all people and institutions that are not black and that, therefore, can be blamed for the desperate plight in which American blacks find themselves.

I wrote the above words on Friday, meaning to publish them on Friday and then, when that fell through, meaning to publish them on Saturday. Clearly, I missed both of my self-imposed deadlines. My first duty is to my family, and my family has been demanding. In a way, that’s a good thing, because I had the opportunity to add to my thoughts on this subject.

Tomorrow, the Watcher’s Council will publish a forum asking council members to predict whether a grand jury will indict Darren Wilson, the police officer who allegedly shot Michael Brown. I’m going to give you a preview of the answer I sent the Watcher, since it’s really a continuation of the thoughts I was developing here:

I hate to say this, but I think whether Officer Wilson is indicted depends on the jury’s racial composition. I can’t say what a majority white jury would do, because I don’t have the evidence before me. However, sadly, I have no doubt whatsoever that a majority black grand jury would issue an indictment for first degree murder.

This leads me to a different issue. Back in 1939, when Hattie McDaniel was the first black woman to win an Oscar for best supporting actress as Mammy in Gone With The Wind, she made a brief speech:

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, fellow members of the motion picture industry and honored guests: This is one of the happiest moments of my life, and I want to thank each one of you who had a part in selecting me for one of their awards, for your kindness. It has made me feel very, very humble; and I shall always hold it as a beacon for anything that I may be able to do in the future. I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race and to the motion picture industry. My heart is too full to tell you just how I feel, and may I say thank you and God bless you.

It later turned out that the studio wrote those words for McDaniel, especially the bit about her sincere “hope I shall always be a credit to my race,” a line that deeply humiliated her.

I can understand McDaniel’s humiliation about having any words put in her mouth, especially words that emphasized her race, but I’ve never found the notion of being a credit to ones race distasteful. Perhaps that’s because I’m Jewish, and we Jews, like the blacks, have always been the “other” race.

What one Jew does always has the potential to be a negative stereotype applied to all people. Thus, I found Bernie Madoff’s frauds disgusting, because they destroyed people’s livelihoods, but I also found them embarrassing because, as a Jew, I hate it when a fellow Jew feeds into a negative Jewish stereotype.

One of the things I find so incomprehensible about modern American blacks is that they do not impose standards on their fellow blacks. There is no expectation of a self-correcting mechanism. If you’re a black who does bad things, you’re not someone who brings shame on the black community. You are, instead, just another victim, along with the black teens you’ve killed, the Korean or Indian store owners you robbed and pistol whipped, and the whites you injured or murdered in a “knock out” game. The black community, rather than denouncing a drugged-out, weaponed-up, murderous black teen as a disgrace to the race is embraced and has his image printed on t-shirts.

Thinking about it, what I’ve just said isn’t a different issue at all. It explains why I’m certain that a majority- or all-black grand jury would indict the Ferguson police officer in the blink of an eye. As far as they’re concerned, blacks are always the victims no matter how degraded or violent their behavior. And if it’s always someone else’s fault, an indictment against whichever “someone else” happens to be available is a no-brainer. Racial pride, rather than bringing with it high standards, means no standards whatsoever.

I wrote the above words about violence, but they apply with equal weight to education — a concept that has me circling back to the video that opens this post. America has never heeded Frederick Douglas’s words just to let the black man be:

Instead, having transported African-Americans to this shore, we’ve meddled relentlessly, not just with their persons, but with their culture. What began as an enslavement of their bodies has continued as an enslavement of their souls. They are as chained by this perverted “self esteem movement” as they ever were by whips and overseers. Because they are relentlessly told that they can do no wrong, they are forever foreclosed from the insights and opportunities that would enable them to do things right.

I’ll leave you with Bill Whittle’s indignation about the realities of black life — both as victim and as criminal — about the political system that refuses to acknowledge this reality, and about the race mongers who, along with prisons and townships, profit mightily from a black culture willfully denied insights about itself so that it can change its culture for the better:

Fundamentally, it is not racist to tell African-Americans: “You are just like me. Your life will always be buffeted by forces beyond your control, but I believe that, like me, you came into the world with drive, intelligence, and the capacity to be a moral person. I agree that many of you live in desperately awful environments, but you have it within in you to rise above that and move beyond it. Study hard, work hard, obey the law, and don’t let cretins, whether in your community or in law enforcement or anywhere else, cause you to fall off the path of hard work and righteousness.”

It is racist, though, to tell blacks: “You’re black, so you’re helpless.”

I always enjoy Andrew Klavan’s videos, but this may well be one of the best he’s ever done. With sly sarcasm and wit, he quickly and neatly exposes the rank hypocrisy and disdain for blacks that has animated the Democrat party for more than 150 years:

A friend asked me what I thought of an Atlantic article pointing to the fact that, sixty years after Brown v. Board of Education, America’s schools are once again becoming segregated, as whites (and Asians and East Indians) do whatever they can to flee predominantly black schools. Black schools are academically much, much weaker than white schools and, as the whites flee, the infrastructure of the schools declines.

The article focuses heavily on the fact that academically-oriented black children suffer badly from this de facto segregation, and strongly implies that white racism is at fault. I readily concede that this re-segregation is happening and that the tragic result is that bright black kids are having their futures destroyed. I don’t believe, though, that whites (and Asians and East Indians) are motivated by racism when they abandon previously integrated schools.

The problem isn’t race, it’s culture. (Call it “culturism,” if you will.) Thus, white parents aren’t saying “I can’t let my little precious go to school with those black people because they are an inferior race who will taint her through contact.” Instead, what they’re saying is “I want my precious to have the best education possible and that requires, among other things, that the other families at the school have the same goal.”

What these white (and East Indian and Asian) parents know is that black culture is not education-oriented. Indeed, for some time, among the children at least, it’s been anti-education, with black children who work hard at school castigated by their black peers for “selling out” or being “Oreos.”

Hispanic culture is also resistant to education. As to that, I actually have some first hand anecdotal data from people who have worked closely with the Hispanic community in the education context. In the late 1980s, very upper crust Hispanic friends of my family had set up an institution to try to teach Hispanic parents to encourage their children at school. These friends told me that the parents, most from rural areas, had the farmer’s mindset, which is to get the kids out of school and to work as soon as possible. Even though the parents came to America for economic opportunity, they couldn’t wrap their minds around the idea that, subject to some exceptions, education is the key to economic success in America. Children old enough to work were actively discouraged from seeking an education.

Twenty-five years later, my sister-in-law, who works in the Los Angeles school district, tells me the same story: Many Hispanic parents prefer their kids to earn some money sooner, rather than more money later. Sure, there’s a bell curve, with certain black or Hispanic kids and their families focused hungrily on an educational goal but, for the most part, neither the children nor their parents focus their energy on education.

White, Asian, and East Indian cultures, for the most part, are obsessed about education as a necessity for thriving in America. Parents in these cultures understand that the school’s intellectual environment matters. If the school culture sees every parent in the community demanding hard work and high grades, that will trickle down to the children, who will create a competitive, exciting academic culture. So yes, white parents are fleeing predominantly black schools (and doing so in whatever way possible), but they’re not doing so for the old-fashioned racial reasons. It’s all about education cultures versus anti-education cultures. Culturism, right?

I anticipate that someone will point out that the same article says that, when the schools were first integrated, the integration was successful. I don’t doubt that. Back then, integrated schools were thrilling, shiny, new toys. As the toys lost their gloss, though, people made less of an effort.

More importantly, though, the integration happened thirty-five years ago. That’s an important date, because it was before political correctness came along to poison things. In the late 1970s and throughout most of the 1980s, teachers could reasonably expect equal effort from Joe Black and Moe White.

Thanks to the scourge of political correctness, however, it’s now racist to expect black students to work as hard and perform as well as white students. Heck, with microaggression, a new twist on political correctness, it’s even racist if the teacher, when he walks into the classroom, says good morning to Moe White before he says it to Joe Black — never mind that Moe White sits next to the door, while Joe Black sits on the opposite site of the classroom.

Culture, not race. Culture, not race. Culture, not race…. Although that’s not quite true.

There is a horrible racism pervading the American education system, but it comes from the Left. The Left has successfully argued that blacks are so mentally inferior to other races that they are incapable of elevating their culture to include good behavior, hard work, and ambition. Until that grotesque Leftist racism is killed, and blacks are recognized as fully equal to other races, and therefore capable of academic rigor, whites, Asians, and East Indians will do anything they can to insulate their children from black (and Hispanic) culture in America’s public schools.